


Oh, Night, and Divine (The Selfish Wish Remix)

by imochan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Azkaban, Explicit Language, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Marauders' Era, Remix, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 14:48:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years.  You know what's coming.</p>
<p>Written for the Remix Challenge, 2005. Based on Thistlerose's "Christmas, 1977."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, Night, and Divine (The Selfish Wish Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Christmas 1977](https://archiveofourown.org/works/317664) by [Thistlerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose). 



  _[[I should let my guard down, Remus thought, still kissing the smiling, upturned face, and enjoying what the other was doing in response. He’s been good. He’s been so good. But -- ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/317664)]_

\--

**December 20th 1978.**

It's a strange time of year. London is never white, really, except on the rare occasion, except on their moments on rooftops and their deliciously hedonistic pieces of bliss; except when they're laid out as they curl into their couches, their pillows, their beds, their naked arms. Instead, it's washed-out, metal, wet and flimsy, skindamp and tingling, with the spread of humanity like this, happy and rushed and breathless, familial.

Diagon Alley is frosted over with it. Smells like pinecones crushed under train tracks, he thinks. Cooking oils, thick and nutty, frosted sugar, cherry wood freshly shaved, mulled, and spices, peppermint laughter, thin and sparking in the air, down the cobblestones. London rises grey over it all, smoke and clattering streets; it is almost suppertime, the world gone a deep blue, the early December night.

Sirius touches his fingertips to a window, and the frost bleeds away in slow little ovals, the water slides down his skin. He touches the window, breathes in, out, slow, and is able to ignore being jostled by women in red woolly hats and children with pink, snow-swollen noses and men in business robes ignoring it all to the last because jewelry is good enough again this year, again, isn't it? He breathes to clear the window, rubs the rest of the frost away with the side of his fist; the boy looking back at him is washed-out, cold, breathless with all of this life, with his own galleons in his pocket and a worn leather jacket pulled tight against his neck.

He buys biscuits, gingerbread, thick and dense and heavy, hanging from his fingers in a brown paper bag; he buys ten bright red sweets, shaped like holly and berries, like kisses. He smiles all the way down the street, head back to the sky, hair in his eyes and mouth, feeling the touch of the cold, the snow, on his cheeks, and keeping it all close (the childsilly giggle curled into his belly, like a sprig of bubbles, spinning).

He buys something beautiful. He sees it in a shop window under the melting wash of his breath, and thinks, Hello, yes, yes, _hello_. He's never been one for small things, pretty things – they are _boys_ , he thinks – but he buys it, because it is so beautiful, and perfect, and he curls his fingers around it in his pocket, to make sure he hasn't lost a single grain of it, at all.

When he returns, Remus is asleep in the curve of the couch, and Peter is making coffee in the kitchen. The radio is on, tinny, beautiful; there is the scuttle of snow and pigeons on the windowsills, outside.

"Christ!" James yells, from the bathroom. "Black, _christ_ , if that's you, your tap's just bit me!"

"He's been swearing at it," Remus murmurs, not opening his eyes.

Sirius hides the bag behind his back and leans over the arm of the couch. "Head?" he asks; resists – just barely – how easy it is to touch Remus's hair.

"Mm, better," says Remus.

"Ribs?"

"Mm-hm."

"Could give you a once-over, again," he grins, there's the reminiscent taste of salt on his lips.

"D'n't tease," Remus mumbles, and shrugs his shoulders up, a sleepy hunch, warm and lazy.

"Wasn't," he says. He wasn't. He loves him, in every moment.

"Mmph," says Remus, and is quiet again, the sleeplessness and buzz of warm, exhausted blood written in his skin.

_I wasn't_ , Sirius thinks. He folds his arms and rests his chin on his hands, and kneels; he kneels, and sighs. _I've bought you something beautiful_ , he thinks, and he wants to break it open, there, shower the sleepy, pink face with snow and dampwoolen mittens and bloody open-roasted chestnuts or whatever-the-sodding-hell, whatever it is, that thing that smells like pine needles and red velvet ribbons, that sounds like bells over York.

_Look at you_ , he whispers. _Look at what you do to me._

There is a click, a rush of water in the background – in the kitchen Peter turns the music up and the choir sings Glory To Men - the soothing pad of feet on the carpet.

"Fucking ponce, look," James thrusts a sore-looking finger under Sirius's nose. "Your tap, your tap."

"You were swearing at it," he grins. He grins because the words taste like Remus, and he has a present in a brown paper bag, and he's going to ask him, again, it's been a year, and he's been good, and the world holly-red and perfect, even in _this_ flat.

"Lupin, you stop telling him _blasphemies_ , you'll get coal again," says James, over the top of his head.

Remus flips him off with sleepy, white fingers.

_Lazy bastard_ , they all say, affectionately, and pile blankets onto the small body and funnel willow-cinnamon tea into his belly and lay him out, a bundle of warm-bread, a sacrifice for happiness – _look at what we do_ , they say.

"Shh," says Sirius, and pats the pillow with his fingers, because he's sometimes afraid to touch. "I know."

 

 

**December 22nd 1979.**

Sometime around three in the afternoon, the heat in Sirius's flat goes out. They can see their breath by evening, over a shared plate of leftover curry and jasmine rice. Their fingers are stained saffron with it, because Sirius feeds him with a pinch of thumb and fingers, heads tilted back, and laughs with a puff of air. Remus's lips are pale and ochre, tasting like the humidity of summertime, out of place, his own source of heat that Sirius teases from him, out into the open world, to lap up greedily. Until he's melting.

They take a blanket from the bed; drape it over their bodies like a cotton tent. He strips Remus with tongue-sticky fingers, smoothing the warmth back into that skin, bares him out on the naked threads of carpet, in the patch of light from the streetlight outside, filtered through the fabric. Remus arches, quiet: shifts and shrugs out of his shirt, into Sirius's arms, lips soft and sliding wetly, slightly helplessly, over Sirius's jaw. Sirius shivers, rolls him to the carpet, braces both hands on his face and kisses him until he can't feel the cold, the stupid, _aching_ moments where he thinks, _what are you doing here, with me, like this, here, in this place?_

"Can I fuck you?" he whispers, the words are in both their mouths, both their tongues, their lips. His palm finds the beautiful dip of a scar on Remus's stomach; he can feel the shadow of heat against his splayed fingers.

"Fuck?" Remus smiles, a frosted puff of air. He draws it out, the word, until it's glowing, black and bright just above his lips. Sirius licks at it, grinning.

"Yeah," he mumbles, and his fingers slide under the waistband, finding hips.

"Here I thought – " says Remus, stuttering when Sirius rubs against his thigh, " – I thought, you only wanted me here for conversation."

"Mmph," says Sirius, and sits up, hand pressed to Remus's lower stomach, making him watch as he strips Remus's legs of his trousers, his underwear, walking love-numb fingers up his thigh again, spreading slowly. "No one said you couldn't keep talking," he whispers. "You should."

"I should - " Remus sighs, eyes tipping closed; Sirius sees that hesitant edge that's always there – this is the most beautiful part, the most tenuous, the place, _every time_ , Sirius waits, waits, baited, frozen, and it's never quite there.

"Should," Remus whispers.

"Yeah," Sirius kisses the words into him, his neck, his sticky shoulder, his chest, fingers kneading the skin of his thighs. "C'mon. Moony."

"Should what?" Remus says; his voice is throated, muffled by a palm – he runs shaky fingers through his own hair, spreads it out over the carpet, makes Sirius's heart stop, on purpose. "Should let you touch me?"

"Yeah." Sirius does. With both hands, with his fingers, smelling like hot India spices, with his skin-damp palms, finding Remus's half-erection, pulling it hard. Finding that hot crook, just below, with a press of a thumb, the delicious jerk it sparks into Remus's breathing, that first touch of belonging.

"A—ah," Remus whispers, swallows; he's frowning. "Should let you. Let you -- touch me with your tongue?"

He grins. He does. Remus shudders. He dips his mouth between his fingers, feeling the sharp electricity of a moment torn between abandon and shame. "Yeah," he says, again, muffled into Remus's damp thigh. "You like that."

"Yes," Remus hisses. "Should let you, a-again -- "

"Christ," Sirius whispers, and tongues at him, thumbs holding him open, greedy for it all, sounds, shivers, goosebumping skin, encouragements – yes, they say, yes you're beautiful yes you're good yes you're mine yes yes have _me_.

He rolls them - Remus straddling, eyes first wide, then quiet, hot, lip bitten – the blanket falls off, twisting around their thighs and ankles. He kisses him; and, and, no, it's _they kiss_. It's sticky, sloppy, makes him harder because of how it makes Remus rut up against him.

"I – " he gasps. He can't breathe. "I – Remus."

"Shh. Shh, it's – "

Remus takes Sirius's wrist and runs his tongue over the thumb, the fingers, sucking them into his mouth, and now they taste like nothing but each other. He slides his hand down Remus's flank, over his hip, rubs at the dark, damp place. And his fingers are inside him, twisting, crooking, and Remus is bracing himself with bowed head, panting, rutting, eyelashes damp. Their thighs are wet, the press of heat is driving the frantic pace, and he's _not_ in control, he thinks, he doesn't _want_ to be, he wants to give it up, out – he shoves his fingers deeper, _oh_ – let me see, he thinks, let me see this moment mould itself into desperation, _to wring the words from your mouth_. It doesn't matter, he hisses, what I say – you'll say no, you'll say no. He knows.

"Come _on_ ," he groans. "Oh, oh, fuck." He has to shut his eyes; Remus has tipped his head to the side, lolling, the curve of his throat, the back of his neck pale and bared.

"Yes," Remus whispers. " _Yes_ – please, please."

Sirius can't speak, anymore. He imagines he's asked the right question to that answer.

 

 

**December 24th 1980.**

It's Christmas Eve, for a while. They sit outside on the fire escape and watch the snowfall.

"Happy, happy – " Peter glances at the pocket watch he got last year, holds it high to the streetlamp light, squinting with alcohol and the long night. " – Christmas!"

"Twelve, is it?" asks James, lazily, turning his head against the iron of the railing. There is snow in his hair, wetness on the panes of his glasses; he's grinning, looking like a sopped-up sponge.

"Twelve," says Peter. "This is nice."

"You're drunk," Sirius points out, with a stab of his cigarette to the air.

"Not!"

"Druuunk," says Sirius again, and tilts his head back; Remus's shoulder is nicely positioned to catch it, easy and secretive, still. It's in these places they still feel right.

"One to talk," Remus murmurs. "One to talk, you are."

"All of us," James laughs, and flicks his cigarette out over the edge of the railing. Sirius watches it sail, burning out, like a firefly, a snowflake alight, to the ground. I'm still in love, he thinks. This means something, he decides, that it can still feel this way. This means that I've done something right, maybe, maybe?

"Should get going," says Peter. "Busy day. Tomorrow."

"It's Christmas," Remus protests, stirring. "Peter, you're too – "

"Busy day," Peter smiles again, giving an old man sort of grunt, as he rises, hand catching at James's shoulder for support, so easily given. Sirius sees the lingering, the slight crook of a thumb and a finger. What does that mean, he thinks, when you haven't kissed?

"Off, off!" James kicks at Peter's knee, grinning. "Geroff, get on, you."

"Laters, lads!" Peter calls back, climbing back in through the window, the small span of his back retreating into the kitchen. Good boy, thinks Sirius, watching the stoop, the climb, the lope. Good lad, we've done well.

There is an audible sizzle of air when Peter apparates – the snow makes everything else soft except the things they listen for. James stretches, sidelong glance – sometimes, Sirius imagines he sees the one thing he's never told. Sometimes, Sirius imagines he's as blind as they come. Sometimes, it doesn't even matter.

"Me too," James says, scooting to the window. "Lupin, you off?"

"No," Remus yawns, Sirius can feel the stretch of a beautiful jaw against the top of his head. "No. I'm t'stay the night."

_Are you?_  Sirius thinks. And the churches of York sing Hallelujah, across the city roofs.

"Listen," Remus mumbles.

"I am. 'Course."

_Are you?_ Sirius whispers, when they're tucked in bed, Remus asleep, him carefully awake – the soft difference only that he can still consciously feel the rise of Remus's chest, still taste him on his tongue. _Are you, are you here, still._

"Will you stay," he whispers, against Remus's ribs. "For me? For --"

 

 

**December 25th 1981.**

Tonight, Sirius looks upwards. He knows what day it is, in a piece of time that is mulch-like, rich, satisfying like the scrape of earth from pink skin, fleshy mouth, white, rigid nose, the gasping for air by the buried. He knows; he tilts his head back, because there are stars behind his eyelids. The jarring screech, the everlasting rattling, there, there, behind his temples, has gone quiet; now, here. The walls suck out the air, now, here, the stones cold, but he breathes. He breathes; it all sounds like distant bells, and a selfish forever.

 


End file.
